25 Days of Christmas Cross Stitch Freebies

There are a lot of great old cross stitch patterns on the Internet, and a lot of good free content if you’re willing to dig around for it.

I’ve had this link to a freebie page from Aurifil (which is a thread maker, apparently) for a long time, but I just clicked on it again recently and realized there was a whole set of little Christmas cross stitch patterns on it.

They were originally presented as a Christmas in July project, but you can grab the whole set or any of them that you like to stitch up just in time for the holidays.

There’s a whole array of projects, including:

gingerbread person
Christmas dogs and cats
stockings
make a wish with an ornament and candy cane
Christmas hats
letters to Santa
snowflakes
reindeer
a traditional Santa and a surfing Santa
Christmas trees made out of different shapes (and other Christmas tree projects)
mistletoe
ornaments
Merry Christmas with holly

There’s also a set of blackwork designs that looks like stars or snowflakes you can use to fill in the background on a project or use as an allover design.

The projects range in size and number of colors involved. The stockings one shown above, for example, uses five colors of thread and measures 46 by 44 stitches if I can count right.

You can stitch these projects as they are or combine designs to make your own Christmas samplers. Or just stitch a portion, such as a single one of these stockings, to make a Christmas ornament or greeting card.

You can grab all of these patterns, as well as a few other freebies, at the Aurifil website. Tip: click on the name of the pattern under the picture and it will automatically start a download of a PDF of the pattern.

[Photo: Aurifill]

I started writing this one as a designer spotlight kind of post, and then I realized when I was almost done with it that I had actually featured this designer before. It was in late 2024, so I’ll forgive myself for forgetting, but it’s worth taking another look at Mama Witch Cross Stitch. It looks like the shop has changed a bit since the last time I looked in, and you all just needed to see this amazing pattern anyway.

In the listing this one is called “whimsical opossum,” because of course it is. This little creature is sporting a straw hat and playing a banjo next to a crock of moonshine and surrounded by a wreath of pumpkins, mushrooms and other fall icons. Clicking through the images, though, I see it’s also called Possum Song, which is also pretty great.

Either way, the design is 144 by 130 stitches, which comes out to 10.29 by 9.29 inches, or about 26 by 23.5 cm on 14 count fabric.

This is not the only possum pattern offered by this shop, but you get the vibe from this one.

And to quickly check in on the rest of the shop, there are a great number of Halloween themed cross stitch patterns here, too, many with a sort of dark whimsy like mermaid skeletons, cat witches and a pumpkin-headed rider on a skeleton unicorn, to name just a few.

Another category worth noting, though it is much smaller, is “sad Victorian ghosts,” which features ghosts (sometimes in Victorian garb, sometimes not) going to the pub and the library, hanging laundry and taking a bath.

There are also a lot of Christmas designs, some sweet and some snarky, and a few creepy ones, too. Other categories include the new for 2026 “sunny patterns” (similar style motifs just with brighter colors and lighter backgrounds), as well as bookmarks and mini cross stitch designs.

[Photo: Mama Witch Cross Stitch]

Have you read?